Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Once
upon a time, a locomotive train ran through my son's bedroom and he
didn't wake up. Well, maybe not. But if a train ever did run through
his room he wouldn't wake up. Perhaps you have a family member who
would fall into that category because they sleep so hard. We have tried
a dozen different types of clocks,
including those that speak to you to wake you up, in hopes of finding a
clock that would actually wake him up every morning. Nothing has
worked. He simply doesn't hear them, yet it wakes the whole house up. So it was with great anticipation that I agreed to review the TCL 200 Digital Alarm Clock with Wireless Vibrating Pad from Amplicom
because of a few key features that might, just might, be able to wake
the sleeping giant. Did the Amplicom work? Did my son finally make it
to school on time? Let's find out!

Features and Hardware

Before I tell you the results of our tests, let me go over the features of the clock and show you some pictures. The clock comes with a power charger, a phone cord, a user guide
(yes, can you believe it?), a wireless vibration pad (more on that
soon) and a cable that connects from the vibration pad to the clock for
charging. The clock also runs on batteries (door on the bottom of the
clock) in the event that the power goes out.

It has a bunch of buttons on the front and even more on the back, and I honestly had to read the user guide
to figure out some of the functions. I guess you could consider that a
pro or a con, but it's a pro for me because I like User Guides. For
this clock you need to hold onto the manual because in 6 months when you
need to figure out how to do something, you are gonna need it.

On
the back is where most of the action is, so let's talk about some of
these buttons. At the bottom is where you plug in the power cord, the
charging wire for the wireless vibration pad, and the phone cord. If
you connect the clock to a phone jack in the wall then when the phone
rings in the house the clock will act as an amplifier. This could be
good, I suppose, for a person who was hard of hearing
and needed to know when the phone was ringing. On the back you also
get to adjust the dimmer setting, the snooze duration, the volume of the
alarm, the pitch of the alarm, and which signal (out of 5) that you
want for your alarm. The alarm signals range from just a constant beep
to a series of beeps, to longer tones, etc. It really is a personal
preference as to which one you choose. You also get to choose if you
want the alarm to make a sound, just vibrate, or both. With one of the
switches on the back you also get to decide if you want the display on
the clock face to flash when the alarm goes off, to add to the probability that the person will get up. And a nice touch is that you can set 2 different alarms and each one can be set to go off every day of the week, just on the weekend, or just M-F.

On top is the snooze button and on the right side is a really big knob that turns the alarm off and on. One of my biggest gripes with alarm clocks in general is that the on-off buttons are small, and on most clocks
the labels on the buttons are hard to read. Not so on this clock.
That on-off knob on the side is not only clearly labeled, it is
probably the biggest on-off switch I have ever seen.

On the
front are indicator lights to tell you which of the 2 alarms are active
and if the M-F setting is active. On the front you will also find the
buttons for setting the time on the clock and setting the alarm settings
that you prefer. Also, an interesting feature of the clock is that you
can set the time to be announced in English, German, French, Italian,
and Spanish.

The
2 main reasons why I wanted to try this clock were the sound level and
the vibration pad. The alarm volume on this clock can be adjusted up to
90 dB. How loud is that? Loud. I have read online
that 90 dB is the equivalent of a police whistle, a lawnmower, a power
drill, or a circular saw. Needless to say, this clock is loud. The
vibration pad is round and semi-flat with a non-slip grip on top and
bottom. The on-off switch is on the front and the battery indicator
light is located right above the switch. It has an 800 mAh battery that
is supposed to give you up to 80 hours of charge, and it charges by
plugging it up to the back of the clock. The best way to use it is to
slip it inside the pillow cover so that it doesn't fall off the bed. If
you have the clock set to include vibration in the alarm and you have
the vibration pad turned on, then when the alarm goes off the vibration
pad will start vibrating. The vibration is similar to the vibration on
your cellphone, only much stronger.

Final Results

So
did my son make it to school on time? Oh yes. We had hoped that the
vibration pad would do the trick to cause him to wake up. But the truth
is that he didn't need the pad to wake him up. This clock is so loud
that it wakes him up without needing the vibration pad. We finally
found a clock loud enough to rouse him from his slumber. Thank you
Amplicom. And even though I consider the price
of this clock to be a little high for an alarm clock, it is a no
brainer. If you need to get someone up in the morning, look no further
than the Amplicom TCL 200.